Sunday, July 5, 2015

Varoufakis stepped down

Yanis Varoufakis stepped down as minister of finance of the Tsipras government and said the following about this on his blog:

"The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage.
Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic
rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25th June ultimatum comes with a large
price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great capital
bestowed upon our government by the splendid NO vote be invested
immediately into a YES to a proper resolution – to an agreement that
involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of
the needy, and real reforms.
Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made
aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and
assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that
the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching
an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance
today.
I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit,
the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s
referendum.
And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.
We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the
privileges of office. I shall support fully Prime Minister Tsipras, the
new Minister of Finance, and our government.
The superhuman effort to honour the brave people of Greece, and the
famous OXI (NO) that they granted to democrats the world over, is just
beginning."

At the same time, today, Monday, Yanis Varoufakis wrote an article on his blog about the NO vote of the Greeks:

On the 25th of January, dignity was restored to the people of Greece.
In the five months that intervened since then, we became the first
government that dared raise its voice, speaking on behalf of the people,
saying NO to the damaging irrationality of our extend-and-pretend
‘Bailout Program’.
We

spread the word that the Greek ‘bailouts’ were exercises whose
purpose was intentionally to transfer private losses onto the shoulders
of the weakest Greeks, before being transferred to other European
taxpayers

articulated, for the first time in the Eurogroup, an economic argument to which there was no credible response

put forward moderate, technically feasible proposals that would remove the need for further ‘bailouts’

Ending interminable, self-defeating, austerity and restructuring
Greece’s public debt were our two targets. But these two were also our
creditors’ targets. From the moment our election seemed likely, last
December, the powers-that-be started a bank run and planned, eventually,
to shut Greece’s banks down. Their purpose?

To humiliate our government by forcing us to succumb to stringent austerity, and

To drag us into an agreement that offers no firm commitment to a sensible, well-defined debt restructure.

The ultimatum of 25th June was the means by which these
aims would be achieved. The people of Greece today returned this
ultimatum to its senders; despite the fear mongering that the domestic
oligarchic media transmitted night and day into their homes.
Today’s referendum delivered a resounding call for a mutually
beneficial agreement between Greece and our European partners. We shall
respond to the Greek voters’ call with a positive approach to:

The IMF, which only recently released a helpful report confirming that Greek public debt was unsustainable

The ECB, the Governing Council of which, over the past week, refused to countenance some of the more aggressive voices within

The European Commission, whose leadership kept throwing bridges over the chasm separating Greece from some of our partners.

Our NO is a majestic, big YES to a democratic Europe.It is a NO to the dystopic vision of a Eurozone that functions like an iron cage for its peoples.It is a loud YES to the vision of a Eurozone offering the prospect of social justice with shared prosperity for all Europeans.

About Me

As a kid I liked numbers and the sound of strings. I considered studying engineering but chose social sciences because of my interest in people. I combine a theoretical interest with a practical, social approach which brought me to the sphere of policy research. I am interested in reducing the disparity between poor and rich, between the powerful and the less powerful.
In 1973 and 1982 I lived in Latin America. In the mid-1980s, I was able to create an international forum to discuss the functioning of the international monetary system and the debt crisis, the Forum on Debt and Development (FONDAD). I established it with the view that the debt crisis of the 1980s was a symptom of a malfunctioning, flawed global monetary and financial system.
I was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the European Network on Debt and Development that was established at the end of the 1980s to help put pressure on European policymakers.
In 1990, before the beginning of the Gulf War, I cofounded the Golfgroep, a discussion group about international politics comprising journalists, scientists, politicians and activists that meets regularly.
The website of FONDAD is www.fondad.org